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Territorial practice whereby resident surfers in a given area try to exclude nonresident surfers through threat, intimidation, and occasionally violence; a predictable, if rarely defensible, surf world response to overcrowding. Localism wasn't named until the late 1960s, but the practice itself pre-dates World War II. Visiting California surfers Gene "Tarzan" Smith and Tom Zahn were both harassed, even beaten up, by Hawaiian surfers in the '40s during their visits to Oahu, and a 

 magazine letter writer in 1963 noted that Honolulu surfers were "always fighting" with nonnatives. Two developments set the stage for localism's wider disbursement. First, post–World War II changes in board design encouraged the surfer to perform turns while riding at a tight angle across the wave, and to do so he needed to ride alone. Whereas surfers in previous decades often rode in congenial groups of five or 10 or more, "one surfer/one wave" became the new performance requirement, and put a higher demand on wave resources. Second, and more important, by the late '50s the sport began attracting hundreds, then thousands, of newcomers, which marked the beginning of an exclusionary "we were here first" attitude at some of California's better breaks.

, a professional surfing competition at Steamer Lane was sabotaged by a group of Santa Cruz locals—reasoning that the contest and the ensuing media coverage would bring new surfers to the lineup—who shoved an unmanned judges' stand over the beachside cliff onto the rocks below. Localism hit an apogee of sorts in Southern California during the 1970s: fights were relatively uncommon, but verbal harassment was rampant, and theft and vandalism were widespread, as nonlocal surfers had their car tires slashed, their windshields broken, or their wallets, boards, or wetsuits stolen. "If you don't live here, don't surf here," "locals only," and "go home" became popular graffiti slogans. Australian surfers meanwhile began writing letters to American surf magazines telling the "yanks" to "stay home or go to Mexico," while a thuggish gang of Hawaiian surfers known as the Black Shorts began a long, low-grade terror campaign against surfers visiting the North Shore of Oahu.

Localism has since taken root to one degree or another in virtually all populated surfing areas, from Vancouver Island to the Basque country to Western Australia to Mauritius. In The 

, a region-by-region guidebook to surfing breaks, the volatility of local surfers is noted under a "Hazards" section, along with notes on more customary perils such as rip currents, shallow reefs, and dangerous sea life. While California and Hawaii are both less localized than they were in the '70s (in part because the fight against crowds is now seen as hopeless), territorial pockets remain. Lunada Bay in southern Los Angeles County is generally recognized as the surfing world's most localized break, and in some instances—in Oxnard, California, as well as Lunada— law-breaking local surfers have been convicted of assault charges. Localism has been condemned for the most part by the surf press, who often refer to it as a "plague" or "cancer," but at a basic level it's proven to be an effective practice: fervently localized surf breaks such as Lunada are in fact less crowded while non- localized spots (Malibu, for one) are overrun with visitors.

A limited form of localism has meanwhile gained support among a small number of surf writers, most notably Australians Nick Carroll and Tim Baker. It's hard to argue against the idea that all waves belong equally to all wave-riders, but the local surfer, having spent years or decades learning and decoding a particular break, might justifiably expect a greater share of waves than a visiting surfer. (Particularly a visiting surfer who arrives in a large group, or one who changes the ambient mood in the water by aggressively taking waves, or one who "shadows" local surfers in the lineup—to name a few of the unwritten nonlocal violations.) Throwing punches and slashing tires to keep the lineup less congested, Carroll and Baker have written, is insupportable. "Dropping in" on nonlocals, or paddling around them to secure a better takeoff position—essentially going out of turn—may be acceptable.

Localism, particularly when accompanied by violence, has frequently attracted the attention of the mainstream news media; articles on localism have appeared in 

. The California state legislature, however, defeated the antilocalism California Open Waves Act in 1999, as it seemed redundant to laws already on the books. 

 was the title of the second album by the California novelty rock band Surf Punks. 

, a short documentary focused on localism, was released in 2001.

localism

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